


in the stillness of remembering what you had

by gilligankane



Series: you can tell everybody this is your song [39]
Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: 80's Music, EFA Fic Challenge 2019, F/F, Gen, Mixtape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-29 02:12:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17799152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: She hears things clattering behind her and shooting across the top of the counter before they drop to the floor. Nicole winces at the sound, nearly wrinkling the magazine in her hand.Wynonna pokes her head around the shower curtain. “What’re you doing? Throwing nails?”“Get stuffed,” Nicole grumbles. She looks down at the mess on the floor. “And it was the toothbrushes, actually.”





	in the stillness of remembering what you had

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are, back at it again in this Mixtape AU. 
> 
> It was harder than I initially imagined it would be to get back into the swing of things, but once I started, this world felt so familiar - Nicole's hesitance and doubt; Wynonna's hurt and anger; Curtis's ever-lasting mark. It all felt like I left home and came back and nothing had changed.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope it settles into this world easily, as though _you_ never left it either.
> 
> Written for the Earp Fiction Addiction Fic Challenge 2019 and the prompt "toothpaste."

**“Dreams” Fleetwood Mac, 1977  
** _But listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness: like a heartbeat drives you mad, in the stillness of remembering what you had and what you lost, and what you had, and what you lost_

“Nathan,” Nicole groans, trying to bury her face in her pillow. She can hear the sound of his lawn mower running outside of his window, and a rush of anger swells in her stomach. It took her forever to fall asleep finally. She had to go through almost three whole _Rolling Stone_ magazines, including the ads, before Wynonna-

_Wynonna_.

Nicole opens her eyes and Wynonna is right there, snoring as loudly as a 1979 Snapper engine into her ear. She lifts her hands to shove Wynonna awake, but she hesitates. Wynonna hasn’t slept much since the funeral - and not at all when Nicole isn’t around. The night before last night, Nicole had to read through seven _Rolling Stone_ issues before Wynonna gave in and passed out. It was an improvement, at least. That’s what Waverly would say. Nicole swallows hard. _That’s what Curtis would say_.

The house is quiet, besides Wynonna’s snoring. There’s no radio on, no Eagles drifting under the door. She can’t hear the sizzle of bacon on the stove, Gus demanding Curtis turn down the music. She can’t hear Waverly singing along and Gus finally joining in. She can’t hear Curtis hollering at them to come downstairs; that they’ll miss the crunchy bacon if they don’t get a move on.

Just _quiet._ It’s so quiet now.

Nicole takes a deep breath, but it catches in her lungs, and she coughs it back up. Wynonna jerks, snorting in her sleep, and rolls away from Nicole. Her breathing is different, though, and her snoring fades, and Nicole knows she’s awake now.

“You snore,” she whispers to the back of Wynonna’s head.

“I don’t.” Wynonna swings her hand back without looking, missing Nicole by a mile. “You do.”

“Do not,” Nicole sings.

Wynonna rolls over and glares at her. “You do. You just don’t know it because you’re _sleeping_ when you do it.”

“Wow. You’re a total dexter.” Nicole dodges Wynonna’s second smack. “You know what else you are?”

Wynonna preens a little. “A total babe?”

“Oh, yeah,” Nicole drawls. “Like Babe the pig in that book we read for English class.” She pauses before she grins. “Smell like one, too.” She has to roll off the bed to avoid Wynonna’s hand this time, landing on the floor with a dull thud. Wynonna’s comforter tangles around her feet, and Wynonna looms over her,  standing on the edge of the bed. Nicole can’t wiggle out of it quickly enough. Wynonna lands hard, knocking the wind out of her, and holds her down.

“Say ‘Uncle,’ and I’ll let go.”

Nicole shakes her head, trying to buck Wynonna off of her.

Wynonna’s grip tightens a little. “Say ‘Uncle,’” she demands.

Nicole sags back against the floor, defeated. “Uncle.”

Wynonna grins widely, standing up and offering Nicole her hand. Nicole makes a face, but takes it, standing slowly as she tries to kick the comforter off.

“If anyone is a pig here, it’s you,” Wynonna points out. “Or, you will be.”

Nicole shrugs a shoulder. She wants to be. But the police are the ones who found Curtis in his car, and she’s not sure, really, if she can do it. If she can call and introduce herself and give people the worst kind of news. She knows that Constable Sullivan still calls sometimes and talks to Gus when it’s late.

“He worries,” Gus told her once. “It was his first call like that, you know?”

Nicole remembers. _Shit. I’ve never done this before_ , he said.

She’s not sure she can do it. Not if she has to call people like Gus and tell her - and tell people like Waverly and Wynonna - that someone they love is gone. Sometimes at night, she thinks about what would happen if it was her. If she was out somewhere and she got hurt. She wonders who would call her mom or Wynonna or Nathan or _Waverly_. Maybe Sheriff Nedley. Someone nice, she thinks. Someone who can call every so often and talk to people about her, remember her.

“Someday,” she finally says. She shrugs a shoulder. “I guess.”

Wynonna stares at her funny for a minute before she picks up the end of her t-shirt and sniffs it. Her nose wrinkles and she gags. “That’s grody.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying.” Nicole nods firmly and turns. She wonders if any of the clothes on the floor are clean or if she should check the drawers.

She opens Wynonna’s dresser, wincing at the way there are t-shirts everywhere, none of them folded. Maybe she’ll fold them while Wynonna is in the shower. Organize them, too. She’s already picturing it in her head: by color and then by band, alphabetically. For now, she grabs a ‘72 Eagles shirt, from when they played at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver. She hesitates for a second. Maybe she should pick something else. She knows there’s a shirt in here that John Henry got Wynonna at some concert he went to where the drums were too loud for anyone to hear the singer.

But Wynonna snatches the Eagles shirt out of her hand before she can put it back and marches out of the room, picking up a pair of jeans off the floor. They’re definitely _not_ clean.

She’s going to go downstairs. Maybe start a pot of coffee and try not to make too much noise so Gus doesn’t wake up. Maybe see if Waverly wants to help her make eggs or toast or something that everyone will pretend to eat. Maybe just see Waverly. She can almost hear Van Halen in her head now.

_Some kind of alien, waits for the opening, then simply pulls a string. Love comes walkin' in._

But as she moves towards the stairs, Wynonna grabs the back of her shirt and tugs, pulling her into the bathroom. She can feel the fabric of her shirt - a Journey “Departure” tour shirt her dad left behind - stretch, and her stomach tightens in fear that it’s stretched too much and it’ll never lay flat again.

“Read,” Wynonna demands, pushing a _Rolling Stone_ into Nicole’s hands. She doesn’t wait for Nicole to disagree, kicking out of her jeans and pulling her shirt off. She throws them towards the bathroom door before she jumps into the shower. Her underwear and bra come over the top of the shower curtain and land at Nicole’s feet. She kicks them away and sighs.

Nicole wants to protest. She’s done nothing but read and reread _Rolling Stone_ issues, and she loves them, but she doesn’t like reading out loud. She likes it when Waverly reads.

She looks down at the one in her hands. February 7, 1980. Fleetwood Mac are on the cover. Nicole sighs softer. Curtis loves - _loved_ \- Fleetwood Mac. She leans back against the vanity, flipping until she finds the cover page article.

“Stevie Nicks is in the bathroom of her publicist’s office on Sunset Boulevard, fixing her hair,” she reads. “She can get all of her thick, shag-cut tresses to stay on top of her head with a single pin, she tells me. Sure enough, she has them coaxed into a neat, Victorian-style topknot in less than fifteen seconds with three strokes of a borrowed brush.”

The water comes on and nearly drowns her out. She rolls her eyes and talks louder.  “A short drive down Sunset, inside a film soundstage that once housed lavish production numbers, the rest of the Fleetwood Mac entourage is gathering for tonight’s rehearsal. It was officially scheduled to begin at 4:30, and it’s past six now, but nobody here seems particularly concerned. People traipse in and out. A buffet dinner is waiting.” Nicole pauses.

Nicole looks over her shoulder and jumps back to get a better seat. Her knees are starting to ache, and she’s not awake enough to keep standing this long. She pushes off with one foot, the other bent at the knee so when she catches the edge of the vanity, she can shift her weight back easily.

But she overshoots and ends up further back on the vanity than she was aiming for, half in and half out of the sink. She hears things clattering behind her and shooting across the top of the counter before they drop to the floor. Nicole winces at the sound, nearly wrinkling the magazine in her hand.

Wynonna pokes her head around the shower curtain. “What’re you doing? Throwing nails?”

“Get stuffed,” Nicole grumbles. She looks down at the mess on the floor. “And it was the toothbrushes, actually.”

Wynonna snorts and disappears back into the shower.

Nicole places the magazine on the toilet seat cover, holding her place with a square of toilet paper. She jumps back down, picking up Wynonna’s toothbrush, then Waverly’s, then her own. She reaches for the next one and stops, her fingers hovering just above it.

Curtis’s toothbrush.

His mint toothpaste is right next to it, so close that they’re practically one shape on the floor. Waverly had turned all the toothbrushes over - she even got Nicole another red one, too - but Gus had stopped her before she chucked Curtis’s. “Keep it for now,” Gus had said. She hadn’t even thrown out the toothpaste, even though she hates mint.

“I didn’t mind when Curtis used it,” she told them. “Made his mouth smell like mint instead of bacon grease.”

The tube is half-empty, the end rolled down in a neat cuff that looks just the ones Nicole tries to get on her t-shirts.

“Did you fall down the drain?” Wynonna shouts above the water.

Nicole ignores her, sinking down to her knees. She’s holding them before she can stop herself. _They shouldn’t be on the ground_ , she thinks. _He shouldn’t be in the ground_.

The shower curtain slides back, the plastic rustling like a bad windstorm. Wynonna pops her head back out. “What the hell are you-”

Nicole looks up, Curtis’s toothbrush in one hand and his toothpaste in the other. “I…”

Wynonna’s eyes flash, and Nicole can feel her own burn. It’s from the shower, she’s sure. The mirror is starting to fog and the air is starting to get thin. _Or maybe it’s not the shower_ , a voice in her head says. _Maybe it’s just that it’s Curtis_.

Maybe they’re not ready to believe he’s gone. His second-favorite boots are still at the front door and his coat is hanging on the rack. His plaid mug is in the kitchen cabinet and his toothpaste is still in the bathroom.

She went to the Alberta Railway Museum once, and it was like this: pieces of people left behind. Curtis is everywhere, even though he’s not here, where they need him to be.

“I’ll put them away,” Nicole says quickly. She stands too fast and the room is filled with too much steam and she nearly loses her balance, her hand sliding against the slick pages of the _Rolling Stone_ as she tries to right herself. Her hip bumps the edge of the vanity and she hisses against the pain, the tips of her fingers burning when she pulls open the medicine cabinet.

“Wait,” Wynonna says sharply. She cranks the shower off, the pipe rattling with a dull thud. She disappears for a minute under a large towel before her head pops back up. Nicole can’t focus, eyes swinging between Wynonna’s stringy, wet hair and the toothbrush in her hand and the mint toothpaste in the other and the way the pages of the magazine are starting to stick together. Wynonna almost trips coming out of the shower and steadies herself using Nicole’s shoulder. “Just… give ‘em to me.”

Nicole doesn’t let go, though. Not right away. She holds them in her hand, feeling the weight of the toothpaste, only half used, and the small indents on the plastic of the toothbrush, little marks left behind from Curtis tossing it into his bag for overnight trips to vendors. Wynonna reaches for them, but Nicole can’t let them go. She can’t keep letting go of Curtis.

Wynonna doesn’t ask again. She steps up, her shoulder brushing Nicole’s and nudging her around until they’re facing the mirror above the vanity. She reaches out and wipes a flat palm against the mirror, clearing some of the fog.

“Waverly is going to be upset,” Nicole hears from her own mouth.

“Waverly can bag on me later,” Wynonna mutters. She picks up her own toothbrush from the pile Nicole stacked on the corner and turns on the tap, letting the water soak the brush. She does Nicole’s next, running it under the water before she reaches for the toothpaste Nicole is holding.

“Wynonna, we can’t,” Nicole breathes.

“Why?” Wynonna blinks hard, and when her eyes open, they’re red at the corners. “He’s not going to use it. What?” she scoffs, her voice watery. “Do ghosts brush their teeth?”

Nicole’s stomach clenches. “Wynonna.”

“Is he going to float down from music heaven and yell at us for leaving the cap off?” Wynonna continues.

“ _Wynonna_.”

“Do you think people who are _dead_ -” Wynonna stops, her eyes wide.

Nicole knows that, sometimes, Wynonna forgets. Sometimes, she blocks it out. Sometimes, she doesn’t remember the way she kept scanning the crowd at her piano recital and how Waverly and Nicole had been so quiet and how when she asked where Curtis and Gus were, Nicole told her to come outside. Nicole knows it’s a coping mechanism. Waverly told her so; told her it was in a book she read about losing a loved one.

Nicole swallows hard. It hurts to breathe and the air is too humid, too damp, but her throat is too dry.

Wynonna shakes her head. “Just give it to me,” she says, her voice breaking on each word.

Nicole passes her the toothpaste slowly. She watches the way Wynonna turns the cap, and she pretends not to see the way Wynonna’s hands shake. She watches Wynonna place the cap on the vanity cautiously, waiting until it’s sitting level before she lets it go. She watches Wynonna slowly roll the end of the tube up, doing it more carefully than she does anything else - even putting tapes into the cassette player downstairs.

She hands Nicole her toothbrush and squirts some toothpaste onto her own. It feels like they took too much out of the tube. There’s less than half now, and Nicole isn’t sure what they’ll do if it runs out. _Does Curtis run out?_ she wonders. _Do we chuck him in the trash and buy a new one when there’s nothing left?_

They’re shoulder to shoulder again, and the mirror is mostly droplets of condensation now.

“Con-den-sation,” Waverly told her once, reading from her science book. “It’s when one surface is cold and the other isn’t as cold, I think.”

Nicole frowned, eyebrows pulled together in confusion. “So, like, when I’d be a cool surface and if Stevie Nicks walked by me - she’s _totally_ cooler than me - then I’d sweat, right? That’s condensation.”

Waverly hadn’t known, but she asked her teacher, and only told Nicole her teacher had laughed and never answered the question. She was going to ask Curtis, but…

Wynonna lifts her arm and her elbow bumps Nicole’s side.

“Are you sure?” Nicole asks.

_Are you sure we can use this? Are you sure he won’t be mad? Are you sure we won’t use it all? Are you sure that won’t mean he’ll be really gone?_

Wynonna nods, her head jerking with hesitance. “Working hard to keep teeth clean. Front and back and in between,” she says quietly. “Remember?”

Nicole’s nod is more sure. “When I brush for quite a while, I will have a happy smile.”

“It’s a baby song,” Wynonna mutters.

Nicole shrugs a shoulder. “It’s a Curtis song.”

The toothpaste is so minty Nicole almost gags. Her throat closes around the taste, and she hovers over the sink, ready to spit it back out. But then the burn settles and she leans back, her arm knocking against Wynonna’s as they try to brush at the same sink.

She remembers Curtis standing here, his toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. She remembers how it used to foam when he talked, and Gus would walk by and tell him to stop messing around and brush his teeth in the bathroom where he was supposed to. She remembers that sometimes he would chase them around the upstairs, pretending to be a monster with his arms raised over his head and his mouth a frothy white.

Nicole spits into the sink and Wynonna turns the water on, washing it down the drain. When she sucks in air between her teeth, she can feel every single tooth ache a little. Not more than the ache in her stomach, though.

She can hear Gus downstairs now. She listens for the chair creaking when Gus gets up and the click that comes when the kitchen light goes on. She can hear the suction of the refrigerator being opened and the shelf rattling as she takes the milk out. She knows the pattern; it’s the same one Curtis had.

The radio doesn’t go on. That’s the difference.

Nicole tries to salvage the _Rolling Stone_ as Wynonna pulls clean clothes on, blowing on the pages so they don’t stick together when they dry. Wynonna pushes her hair back over her shoulder, water droplets spraying around the room and landing on Nicole’s cheek.

“Ready?” Wynonna asks.

_Never_ . _Not anymore_.

Nicole nods. “Sure. Breakfast and then Mattie’s?”

“Just like every other Saturday,” Wynonna says. “Maybe she finally got that Joan Jett and the Blackhearts tape she said she ordered?”

Nicole rolls her eyes. “The one that _just_ came out?”

Wynonna stops, her mouth in a thin line, her eyes serious. “We can’t even begin to know the full extent of Mattie’s powers.”

“The full extent of power.” Nicole snorts. “What does that even mean?”

Wynonna laughs, shrugging a shoulder. “Who knows. That Jeremy kid said it. I think it was in Star Wartrek.”

“It’s Star _Wars_ or Star _Trek_ ,” Nicole sighs. “It’s not both.”

“Fine,” Wynonna dismisses. “Star Trekwars.” She winks at Nicole and takes the stairs two at a time. She pauses at the small table by the door, running her finger over the spines of the book Curtis left there - _my to-read pile_ , he’d told them once. _Books I’ll never get around to-reading_ . He had laughed at his own joke and added _Catch-22_ to the top of it.

Nicole trails after Wynonna into the kitchen, shoving at her shoulder when she stops suddenly.

Gus is staring at them both, glancing at the clock after a moment. “It’s early,” she says.

Wynonna shrugs. “Nicole smelled bad. I couldn’t sleep.”

Gus’s eyes narrow. “Then why is _your_ hair dry and Nicole’s looks like she slept in a hurricane?”

Nicole tries to flatten her hair, her neck burning with embarrassment. “Does not,” she mumbles.

Gus snorts and points at the table, to the weekly ads spread across it. “If you’re up this early, you can help me sort out this week’s coupons.”

Wynonna sighs, but grabs the closest seat and pulls it out, claiming it before she goes for the cabinet. Nicole has to go around her, past Gus, and she’s almost to the table when Gus steps in front of her, eyes wide.

“What’s that?” Gus asks.

Wynonna frowns. “What’s what?”

Gus’s nose wrinkles for a moment.

_She smells it_ , Nicole thinks. _She smells the mint_.

Nicole starts to think this was a bad idea. They should have left the toothpaste alone. You can’t touch anything in a museum, she knows. It’s the rule.

Wynonna goes past her, shouldering her out of the way, and grabs a cup from the drying rack. She fills it halfway and takes a sip. When she hisses, it sounds like a drop of cold water on a hot stove. “S’cold,” Wynonna says, holding a hand to her mouth. “The water and the-” She stops, eyes wide as she turns to Gus.

Gus stares at her for a moment, eyes cloudy. “Curtis always said the same thing,” she says slowly. “Told me that he didn’t care much. Thought the burn meant his mouth was clean.”

“Hurt,” Wynonna mumbles.

“Hurt him, too,” Gus says.

Nicole watches her inhale; watches the way her shoulders shake just a little. Gus stares at them carefully, eyes moving between the both of them slowly before she looks away at the full coffee pot on the counter.

“When you run out, there’s another tube in the medicine cabinet for you.” Gus opens the cabinet and takes down two more coffee mugs. “And once you take that one out, let me know so I can put it on the grocery list.” She pours coffee into the two mugs, nearly to the top. “And you best not get it all over my counter, Wynonna Earp. I know how you like to pretend it’s fingerpaint, but it ain’t. You hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Wynonna says quietly.

Gus rounds on Nicole. “You’ll keep that in check, right? Lord knows this girl doesn’t listen to me.” Her smile is kind, though, and when she looks at Wynonna, there’s a softness in her eyes Nicole knows she rarely has.

“Me, either,” Nicole admits.

Gus snorts. “You’ve got a better chance than me.” She pauses, her head tipped to one side. “What’d Curtis say? Keep her on track?”

_You keep_ them _on track_ , is what Curtis had said. _You take care of my other girls_.

Nicole is trying. She’s trying so hard. But Wynonna keeps pushing her away and Waverly is hovering all the time and Gus won’t sleep in her own bed and they all drink too much coffee and they don’t eat enough and she thinks - when she can’t sleep and Wynonna has dried tears on her cheeks and Waverly has a tight grip on the back of her shirt and she can hear Gus banging around downstairs - she thinks maybe he would be disappointed.

But another part of her, the one that sounds like Curtis did when they used to talk, just the two of them - like Curtis did the night that Nicole climbed down from the roof feeling just a little lighter and found Curtis at the bottom of the stairs - says he’s not disappointed. It says _Hot damn, girl. I knew you would do it someday_.

So she pulls her shoulders back the way she did when Curtis told her he was counting on her, and she nods sharply. “I promise.”

Gus passes her a coffee mug and Nicole cradles it in her hands. It’s one of the plaid mugs, and she hands Wynonna the other plaid one, nodding towards the table. “Don’t tell Waverly about this,” she mutters. “Trying to keep that girl off coffee is like trying to plug a hole in a hose with a piece of toilet paper.”

Wynonna grins widely and takes too big of a sip, wincing, but Nicole shakes her head and takes a smaller sip. Gus cranks on the stove and pulls a plate of bacon from the refrigerator, smacking Wynonna’s hand away from it.

And Nicole pauses, waiting for the moment Curtis should come bursting into the kitchen, stealing a kiss from Gus before he steals a piece of bacon, giving half of it to Wynonna. She waits for him to crank the radio on and to sing along too loudly. She waits for the squeeze to her shoulder and the smile aimed in her direction.

It won’t happen, she knows. It’ll never happen again.

But she thinks of his toothpaste upstairs and the mug in her hand, and it still hurts, but for a moment, it doesn’t hurt as much as it usually does.


End file.
